Dreamer School

She pulled it out quickly and gazed into the mauve cover of her journal. Her eyes began to tear up.

"Dreams always come true," Patricia leaned over and whispered in her ear, "it's a rule of the universe. It's kind of like our motto here in this place."

Patricia's peachy perfume lingered close to Molly's beaming face as she studied her journal.

"Rebecca will show you to your room," Patricia said, shifting off Molly's desk, "I have a meeting I'm late for, you were supposed to be here almost a year ago, so we weren't able to prepare a proper orientation for you like the others had. And it will probably be a little while before you catch up to them. But I can tell you're a smart girl, so don't worry."

Patricia walked over to the group of chatting young women and said something as she left the classroom. Her heels clicked rhythmically like a fashionable metronome out the door and down the hallway. The blonde girl with braids and warm smile broke free from the group and walked towards Molly.

Molly stared into her journal, it was the same, but carved into the cover was a quarter-sized "M." She ran her fingers along the strange capital. What in the world?

"Let me guess," the blonde girl said looking down from the front of Molly's desk, "there was a slight alteration to it?"

Molly hugged the journal into her chest and gazed up at the girl standing before her. She held a journal of her own against her breasts, it was a black and white cow print diary trimmed with pale pink leather and finished with golden edged pages locked up tight with a matching heart-shaped lock.

The girl was the same age as Molly or maybe a year or two younger, she was wearing a pale blue, almost white, denim jacket with a peachy-pink tank that swooped low into her cleavage. A black pearl the shape of an egg dangled on a lengthy platinum chain that circled her long neck three times before resting gently in the middle of her upper chest. She had brilliant sapphire eyes that sparkled in a devious kind of way under elegant, gold-spun lashes. Her face was sublime and shone out into the darkness of Molly's eyes with a pale-rosey glow. Her lips were like the tips of budding roses caught in a summer rain. Her golden braids were looped and pinned up on her head giving an illusion of two halos floating above her ears which where decorated in a small fortune of gold and sapphires. Past the midriff of her flat belly, denim continued down her legs in a pair of matching jeans that flared out at the bottom around a tall pair of peachy-pink merry-janes.

"I'm Rebecca," the girl said, smiling a smile that closed her eyes and sent a warm beam of energy out around her.

"I'm Molly," Molly said, shyly. She felt intimidated by Rebecca's sun-like prettiness.

Rebecca studied her, "I think we should be friends, you're just the kind of girl I dreamt about being best friends with."

Molly looked at her, her mouth fell open a little wider. Was she dreaming?

"I'll show you your room and explain on the way," Rebecca said, sticking out her left hand which bore a single platinum ring with a massive, shifting sapphire towards Molly.

Molly stood carefully and took the warm girl's hand.

"You're going to love it here, trust me," Rebecca said as she pulled Molly along the row of desks towards the door of the classroom.

There were no thoughts in Molly's head as her new situation filled her with wonder second by second. She felt like a newborn, everything seemed amazing somehow. Familiar, but refreshingly magickal.

As Rebecca pulled her out of the room, towards the first row of desks, there was a pretty man in black that caught her eye and hooked it like a fish, yanking her head into his gaze as if he had grabbed her by the cheeks and forced her to look into his eyes.

His green gems burned a blazing bridge of emerald fire instantly into the desperate pits of her dark crystals and Molly felt her heart turn over and begin to purr. She was on her knees and bent over, her arms out, her head down at his feet. He knelt and lifted her chin. Molly felt her mouth open at the turning of his inspecting hands as his thumb entered through her lips. He pulled her up to her feet and spun her around. He pushed her against a wall and stripped her t-shirt and skirt off with a single syllable. He tore off her neon pink panties with a word and she yelped as all the fibers in the garment snapped at once, exploding into a loud crackling pink cloud of electric snow around her. He spread her against the cold wall of her own skull and examined every insignificant crevice of her soul with a scorching fire that screamed and shouted at her with a heavenly roar, rippling across the skies of her heart like a terrible whip of pure willpower. It lashed against every nerve of her body and it felt divine as it overwhelmed and refined her.

Molly gulped and blinked. He had tongued her heart though the unsuspecting holes of her eyes and she was left feeling ravaged from a single glance.

His interest in her became a tumble weed and blew away with a disinterested look, back into the book on his desk. A shimmering shadow that moved like ink through clear oil, surrounded him like a strange possessive smear.

The eye contact between them was brief, but intense. Molly wanted to own his glare. He had everything she never knew she wanted in there. God, her heart was beating so fast she thought she was having a heart attack, who was this man?

"Who..." Molly's thought almost leaked out of her mouth as Rebecca dragged her into the hallway.

Rebecca looked back, "what's that?"

Molly shook her head. Rebecca let go of her hand and slowed down.

"So sorry, I was moving too fast wasn't I?" Rebecca said, "I'm just so excited to be the one to show you around."

"Where am I?" Molly asked. She felt like she had moved past the initial wave of panic enough to begin conversing again.

"Where you belong," Rebecca said, "you're on the outskirts of the human sphere of The Astral Plane."

"The Astral Plane?" Molly asked herself quietly. Who was that guy though?

Rebecca started slowly walking down the hall and Molly followed behind her, staring into the detailed stitching of the giant green eye that Rebecca had on to the back of her jean jacket. Molly hugged her journal closer into her breasts.

It was an ordinary looking hallway, with windows that let in the sky like tides of shifting rainbows on the left side. Molly looked down through them at a courtyard and other sections of the building. It was like a stone brick building of a typical high school but with slight differences. For example, Molly spotted raven-shaped gargoyles on all the corners of the dark, marble window ledges.

She left the enchanting view of the windows and caught up behind Rebecca. Molly looked down at her feet, the checkered marble floor was dazzling, like a deep purple black stone that glittered deeply into itself, alternating with a creamy white, polished marble that looked like frothy surf instantly turned stone. The floor was a fly trap for Molly's eyes. Back outside, there was a single tall castle tower that went far into the rainbow clouds above. It cut a strange silhouette against the ocean of trees that undulated out beyond the building's strange white and black, polished moonstone walls. Her eyes were darting all over, trying to take everything in. Along the walls, instead of rows of lockers, there were shelves of books, some full, some empty.

"There is too much to go over in detail, but the gist of it," Rebecca said looking over at Molly gazing out into the twilight wilderness, "is that we're called 'Dreamers' which are a type of 'Page Dweller'. We all have a diary, journal, or sketchbook in which we fill with ourselves in the forms of dreams or fantasies or whatever of our own making. There are different types of Page Dwellers out there, creative and passive."

The way that guy entered her mind so easily and did those things to her, was that normal here?

"Seems strange," Molly said thinking about him and running an index finger along the edge of her journal.

Rebecca shrugged, "everything's strange if you think about it long enough. But all you need to know is that our books have special powers, and we are here in this school to learn how to grow into them."

Grow into them? Molly had a million and one questions, but remained quiet. She felt overwhelmed and exhausted.

"You'll come to understand the more you play with your journal," Rebecca said.

"Patricia said, I am dead?" Molly said, not really meaning the question for Rebecca, but the thought was heavy and kind of just fell out of her like a limp bar of lead.

"Yeah, we're all 'dead'," Rebecca said, "well not everyone technically, but what 'dead' really means is we are no longer stuck in the strictly human realm of being. Earth is more like a seeding ground of minds. Kind of like an incredibly elaborate online personality quiz that helps us find our unique paths through the ever-increasing, awe-inspiring, copulating-spiral of the infinitely-horny wonder that is the universe." Rebecca smiled a corny smile that made her braids wobble like exclamation points.

"So this is the after life?" Molly said. She was trying to nail the place down in a single concrete sentence, but everyone seemed to be giving her wishy-washy answers about what was going on.

"Yeah, I guess you could say that," Rebecca said, placing a girly finger on her lips, thinking, "though this is the real life, the time on Earth is just a blink of the eye really, like a stint in a cocoon. We are Astral Butterflies!"

Rebecca giggled and pointed to the small blue butterfly that lived on the edge of her tank in the heart of her cleavage with a pretty finger tipped with a exquisitely primed nail with only a clear coat that magnified the splendor of her naturally pink-white nails. The absurd beauty of her single nail swallowed Molly's entire mental mirror. She became the nail on the tip of this girl's dewy finger. All of her billions of pores were pastel pink roses soaking up the warmth of Molly's engrossed gaze. The silky, crisscrossed web of stitching that made up the butterfly on Rebecca's tank top unfurled in Molly's mind like an intimate web, one dripping thread at a time. The rolling hills of pale-blue softness kissed out softly against her tender garden of pores like a chain of pillows made from the feathers of cosmic swans. Molly's mind in its entirety could barely embody the pleasure of being just Rebecca's fingertip.

Rebecca's perfection stunned Molly, was she human? How did such a creature exist? And she wanted to be Molly's friend? Molly swallowed as they turned a corner and entered a space that she could tell was the dorm section.

"Let's see..." Rebecca said, studying the doors as they walked down the long hallway, "ah, this one has to be yours."

Molly looked away from the natural beauty of Rebecca that was filling her with a terrible jealousy and at the door they stopped in front of, it said "MOLLY" and had an image of a cat above it. Molly wrinkled her brow, staring at it. She pushed up her smudged glasses and scrunched her freckles.

"Why don't you get some rest, and we can finish the tour tomorrow," Rebecca said, "I remember when I first arrived here too, you need a little time to yourself." She winked in a way that confused Molly.

"Wait, where do I get food?" Molly asked, "or clothes maybe?" Molly looked down at her mess of an outfit, feeling more than a little outclassed by Rebecca's attire.

"Just make your own, silly," Rebecca said.

Molly's head jerked back slightly at the strange answer, make her own? Molly had no clue how to sew her own clothes together. Or was Rebecca talking about the food? Make her own food? Maybe it was all in the room.

Rebecca hugged Molly tightly and left her in a jasmine-rose infused cloud of perfume that overpowered her and forced her down into the bone-colored sands of a hidden beach. The sun was setting in hues of submissive oranges, yellows, and pinks that radiated out thin, hot tendrils, infusing the moist air with the desire to walk nude into the crystal ocean and become one with the lubricated love of the universal tides. The sand in the water swallowed her toes with every breath the ocean took and Molly felt her heart was a life-jacket in the purifying sea of her love. The glittering gold sun that sparkled off the tops of waves in the distance became the jewellery that adorned Rebecca's seashells of ears as she released her hug on molly.

The miniature sun of a girl walked backwards down the hall with a friendly wave before turning and disappearing around the corner back into the main corridor.

Molly stood there stunned as Rebecca's footsteps faded. The sun was still shimmering in her eyes and the sand was still kissing her in between the toes under the perfumed water that suffused her legs and waist in that heavy rocking motion.

"What is Rebecca?" Echoed out through the network of her thoughts like a distress beacon. Molly had the sense Rebecca could have swallowed her alive if she wanted to. Between her and that guy, were all the people here like that? She gripped her journal tightly and turned.

Molly looked at her door. Her emotions were all over the place. Was this all a dream? Was she really a "Dreamer?" She gripped the silver knob and opened the door with a trembling hand.

~~~

The room was dark, there were no windows. Molly felt around for some kind of light switch on the wall. She must have rubbed her hands along the entire surface before she found it in a spot she thought he had already searched right next to the door.

She flipped the switch and the lights flickered on with a low hum.

It was a white room, nine feet cubed. Molly's jaw dropped as the door shut behind her.

Was this a joke? There was nothing in the room beyond the light switch. She looked up and saw one sizzling tube of white florescence behind a frosted glass panel in the chalky ceiling.

Molly felt like she had walked into a sugar cube.

She stood there, clutching her journal in her hand. What the hell was this? Molly again, felt all along the walls with a probing, pliant index finger, this time for some kind of secret button, hidden door, or something that would make more sense.

Nothing. Just the light switch and four white walls. Even the floor was just another white wall. There was no trim or anything, and the door to the hallway almost blended into the wall when shut.

She kicked off her sneakers and placed them neatly by the door under the light switch. Ten Mollys stared back up at her from her dark mirrors of toes, she wriggled them, airing them out.

Molly walked one stride over, sat down, and rested her back on the left wall. She balanced her journal on her lap and gazed around the room, so this was her new home? Something clenched her gut. That on edge feeling of being in a strange new place combined with hunger pains.

How was she supposed to live here? She needed a bed at least. At least a bed, that was for sure. Molly tapped the solid ground with an exploring hand one last time by instinct.

She opened her journal with a confused sigh. She paged through quickly and confirmed for herself that it was indeed her journal, it even had the last dream she wrote up until she died, "and with a bloody kiss, my lips, body, and soul were his, having burst my lock to bits."

She shoved her right hand into her skirt pocket and fished around for her pen.

The rubber cat on the top of her favorite mark maker greeted her and she felt a little more at ease as she found a blank page in her journal and began to write a diary entry:

Hello Kitten,

I have no idea where I am, I think I died? Ugh, it's all so weird. My stomach is so nervous and hungry. But at least I still have you, my only friend! I am in a small empty room right now, they say it's my dorm. But that can't be right. Wait, let me back up. I am in some school in the after life? Something about the moon? I don't know, I am so confused. But this room simply will not do! I will have to talk to Rebecca or Patricia in the morning, I think there's been some sort of mistake.

In the meantime, I'm so tired, I guess I will just sleep on the floor, I've done that before, though I had a blanket and pillow at least. I feel gross, I need a shower and a change, but I guess that won't be happening anytime soon.

My neck is already sore from trying to write from just my lap. Man, the first thing I could really use is a desk of some kind. A really nice one too, not like my one back at my parents' (when I was alive?) but a beautiful, ornate desk with a tall mirror behind it and elegant drawers to stow away all kinds of secrets. Oh! And with a wonderfully comfortable antique chair with velvety smooth cushions that mold to my form and let me write for hours without feeling any kind of pain. While we're at it, maybe a silky soft oriental rug with pastel flower motifs that smell like a fresh cut garden to sit under my desk that I can rub my toes into as I write. Oh, how nice that would be. Mmmm.

Molly dropped her head back with her eyes closed as she imagined all the little luxuries tickling her mind. Her fantasies were still as vivid as ever, even more so. She could actually feel the silk fibers of the rug under her toes and the soft cushions of the desk chair cradling her pitiful muscles into a cushy paradise.

Molly swallowed and let the wonderful sensations wash over her and disappear.

But they never did.

Molly dug her obsidian toes in the rug and felt delightfully squeezed in the cushions on the arms of her chair. The scents of spring fresh tulips filled her nose. What the fuck?

Her eyes shot open. She saw herself in a tall, nine foot mirror on the wall behind her wide, lacquered, wooden desk.

She sat up in her chair. Her chair?

The mauve journal was on her desk, open in front of her with her pen in the tender groove of its spine. Molly looked around her chair and down at the ground, there was a thick, colorful, plush carpet that sat under her desk.

She turned and looked around the room. It was the same white cube she had entered, with the light switch on the wall near the door and her dirty, white sneakers under it.

Molly stood up from the chair and walked around, looking and touching the new set of furniture. It was exactly how she had imagined it, maybe even better. It was solid and firm, it was real. Realer than real.

There was a kind of fear that attacked her, like a dream too good to be true, Molly couldn't remember the last time she had such a feeling of magickal excitement, it had been so long since she had a feeling so good she didn't want to lose it.

It was a thrill, the thrill of absolute creation.

Molly's heart was pounding as she quickly sat back down in her new favorite chair and scooted it up to the desk by digging her feet into the thick plush of her silk carpet.

She placed her arms on either side of the journal and stared into what she had written. Something Rebecca said echoed inside her. The journals were special.

She wanted to test the book. It had to be what she wrote in the book, right?

She pushed her smudged glasses up and tied her hair back with the red scrunchie from her left arm.

Molly bit the corner of her cherry lip and began writing furiously, imagining how she wanted her small room to look and after penning a single page, she closed the book and looked around her room, exhausted.

She smiled.

There was now a nice loft bed that she could climb into with a space underneath for storage on both sides, like a walk in dresser without a door. There were beautiful paintings of cats in rococo gardens hanging on her wall. Molly looked up where the light had been and she began to cry, she sobbed softly in her wonderful chair.

She had replaced the horrible white buzzing light with a skylight. The magick and beauty of it overwhelmed her sensibilities and she began to laugh a little madly with joy as she stared into the warm red glow of the waning crimson moon above.